#make bosses pay

[probablyasocialecologist]

If you search for ‘#selfcare’ on Instagram on any given day, you will be immediately bombarded by over 1 million results. You’ll scroll through images of skinny white women in yoga inversions, of bubble baths and hot chocolate, of self-care journals, kits and workbooks you can click through to buy. You might, if you’re lucky, scroll past an Audre Lorde quote, pasted in an aesthetically pleasing font against a pastel background: ‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation.’ Lorde actually followed this statement with ‘and that is an act of political warfare,’ although that part is often left out, presumably so as not to upset the corporations cashing in on our collective insecurities. Despite its origins in activism and organising, the concept of self-care has now become squarely co-opted by capital through means akin to corporate creep, and it’s little wonder why. The phrase’s popularity has exploded in recent years as inequalities have widened, capitalism’s grip has tightened, and global politics have looked extremely volatile. As people search for answers, capitalism sells them false consciousness: bath bombs and mason jars on the surface, individualism and atomisation underneath.

Eve Livingston, Make Bosses Pay: Why We Need Unions

[probablyasocialecologist]

Although not new, terms like ‘white working class’ have gained traction in recent years, serving at different turns as nostalgia, weapon, dog whistle, and obfuscation. The motives of its peddlers are clear: beneath the apparently benign, literal language, is a suggestion that white people (used interchangeably and incorrectly in this context with British men) have been disadvantaged by diversity and inclusion, that there is something unique about the experience of the white working class, and that this is a demographic which merits special treatment. To affix the word ‘white’ on the front of ‘working class’ is to posit that there is something distinct about the relationship between whiteness and class. And yet people of colour in the UK disproportionately live in poverty, most notably those of Black, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent. When the economy crashed in the 1970s, the number of unemployed Black and Asian workers rose by 290 per cent, nearly three times as fast as the jobless total as a whole. People of colour have always been some of the most marginalised members of the working-class, at the sharpest end of societal and economic shocks. The ‘white working class’ narrative, then, serves no purpose other than to obscure where power lies, undermine liberatory politics, and reinstate the white male breadwinner as the default trade unionist and gatekeeper of the union.

Eve Livingston, Make Bosses Pay: Why We Need Unions

[probablyasocialecologist]

Because we’re indoctrinated into the world of waged labour from childhood – watching parents go to work each day; taking on Saturday and after-school jobs for pocket money; constantly being asked what we want to ‘be’ when we grow up and knowing instinctively it’s a question about paid work – it can seem like an inevitable and obvious feature of society. But take a step back for a moment and consider that our workplaces, where we spend one third of our lives toiling to prop up the other third not spent sleeping, can also be the places where we’re most in danger, where we’re most exploited, where we’re least in control. One of the relationships which has the most control over our lives is also one of the most fundamentally imbalanced.

Eve Livingston, Make Bosses Pay: Why We Need Unions

[probablyasocialecologist]

When you log sick days on the HR portal at your workplace, chances are they are instantaneously plugged into a formula called the Bradford Factor, used by HR departments to measure absenteeism and predict a worker’s ‘risk’ to the employer on the principle that short, unplanned absences are more disruptive than long-term sick leave. You might not have known you had a Bradford Factor score; your boss probably knows what yours is.

Eve Livingston, Make Bosses Pay: Why We Need Unions

[probablyasocialecologist]

The story of the Grunwick strike teaches us three lessons: that despite stereotypes of male breadwinners, the most bold and effective action is often taken by the most marginalised workers; that solidarity has not always been extended as unconditionally to these workers as to their white male counterparts; and that narratives about these struggles are contested and often manipulated by those who would seek to undermine them. The latter of these is a dilemma the union movement continues to grapple with. On the one hand, very real issues exist and a great many brave and bold activists work tirelessly to highlight and challenge them. On the other, these struggles have often been capitalised on by those who care very little about liberatory politics but have a vested interest in discrediting trade unions. Their caricatures of smoke-filled rooms and gentlemen’s agreements erase and undermine the brilliant organising work being done by women and other marginalised groups in arenas as diverse as fast food, outsourcing, cleaning, education and more. An already downtrodden and disempowered movement can be wary of challenging itself for fear of falling into this same trap or giving ammunition to its detractors. But it is vital that we do, for a movement that enshrines or perpetuates the very power relations that further marginalise workers is no movement at all.

Eve Livingston, Make Bosses Pay: Why We Need Unions

[probablyasocialecologist]

The nature of precarious work also specifically undermines collectivism and solidarity. Workers are often in direct competition with each other for shifts, and in many cases don’t even know or regularly see their colleagues. While traditional union organising models frequently talk about staff rooms and water cooler conversations, today’s precarious workers book shifts through an app or have no physical headquarters. There’s little incentive to collectivise, let alone much opportunity to do so. There are practical barriers, too, to organising this workforce. Shifts change at the last minute and there are families to support, second jobs to work, the daily grind to be endured before you even get to thinking about campaigning. The reasons these workers need unions are the same reasons unions can find them particularly difficult to reach or, depending on how you look at it, particularly easy to ignore.

Eve Livingston, Make Bosses Pay: Why We Need Unions

[probablyasocialecologist]

In 2020, journalist Vicky Spratt wrote about so-called Instagram business coach Sarah Akwisombe and the women who had paid thousands of pounds to her ‘No Bull Business School’. ‘I thought I was buying business advice but it wasn’t anything I didn’t already know,’ said one client. ‘The focus was mainly on mindset and . . . advice like getting up at five in the morning and doing loads of cardio, or getting rid of people in your life who don’t support you.’ No amount of business coaching, Instagram-aestheticised career books, or cardiovascular exercise can compete with a union. The problem is not our mindset, our access to productivity software or our propensity to hit the snooze button – it is the uneven distribution of power and wealth. Those challenges are collective, not individual, and for this reason only unions are equipped to answer them.

Eve Livingston, Make Bosses Pay: Why We Need Unions

[probablyasocialecologist]

Today, our labour market is dominated at the bottom end by women and migrants, and comprised mainly of sectors such as service and care, the successes of which are largely built on the exploitation of undervalued and unorganised workers. The days of unionised and secure jobs in manufacturing and industry, and a time when class was widely recognised as an organising principle for society, have long made way for precarious and exploitative work and an active attempt to obscure the experience and effects of class difference. As a result of these rapid changes and active political obfuscation, we are confused. Regular debates about what constitutes the working class play out on the pages of newspapers and in the tweets of activists, politicians and journalists. Class has come to encompass not only your relationship to waged labour, but various cultural and aesthetic markers, obscuring the role of the state and capital. Did you visit museums as a child? Have you ever eaten fish fingers for dinner? What kind of wallpaper did you have in your house growing up?

Eve Livingston, Make Bosses Pay: Why We Need Unions